Insights into the Synthesis and Surface Functionalization of Mesoporous Carbon for Catalytic Applications

Abstract

Ordered mesoporous carbons with optimized surface functionalities were synthetized by a soft template method using the organic‐organic self‐assembling method between eco‐friendly polymerizable molecules (pholoroglucinol and glyoxal) and a triblock‐copolymer (Pluronic F‐127). Varying the curing and pyrolysis treatments, lead to materials with high surface area and long‐range order. Moreover, new functionalities and modification of carbon surface were obtained using simple post‐treatment methods, without significantly changing the texture of materials. In particular, surface oxidation using HNO3 in mild conditions introduces a high number of oxygen functionalities over the ordered carbon, improving the overall activity of this material as noble‐free catalyst in the aerobic oxidation of benzyl alcohol. The creation of carbons with mesoporous and optimized surface functionalization can be considered a promising way to develop metal‐free catalysts and/or efficient catalyst supports for heterogeneous hydrogenation and oxidation reactions.

Enhancement in Graphitization of Ordered Mesoporous Carbon by Assistance of Soybean Oil Surfactant

“…This demonstrates that SBA-15 template was removed completely from the G-CMK3@SBA-15 sample after the etching step (Figure 1). Herein, the presence of O element is attributed to the surface functionalization of carbon during the synthesis process and/or the adsorption of oxygen on the sample surface [14] Meanwhile, the presence of S and Cl is resulted from the chemicals used to synthesize the material. Similarly, the C, O and Si contents of the CMK3 sample were measured to be 79.58, 19.11 and 0.41 wt.%, respectively, implying the high purity of the obtained CMK3 and G-CMK3.…”

Selective pore filling of mesoporous CMK-5 carbon studied by XRD: Comparison between theoretical simulations and experimental results

“…the intra-tubular pores (within each carbon tube) and the inter-tubular pores (between adjacent carbon tubes), as depicted in Figure 1. Since the first discovery of CMK-5 in 2001 an enormous number of novel (composite) materials with a huge potential for catalysis [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8] , energy storage/conversion [9][10][11][12][13][14] and adsorption-/desorption studies [15][16][17][18][19][20][21] based on the initial CMK-5 structure have been synthesized.…”